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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 




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(An unpublished portrait) 



ROBERT LOUIS 
STEVENSON 



BY 



Isobel Strong 

Author with Lloyd Osbour 
VIEMORIES OF VAILIMA 



Joint Author with Lloyd Osbourne of 
MEMORIES OF VAILIMA 



NEW YORK 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1911 






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Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons 



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©CI.A2t)7:r35 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



ROBERT LOUIS 
STEVENSON 

THE CHILD 

r>EFORE R. L. S. was known to 
the world as a writer, the name 
of Stevenson called to mind the light- 
houses that guard the coast of Scot- 
land and "open in the dusk their 
flowers of fire." Twenty sentinels 
they stand, built upon rocks in the 
midst of angry seas, solidly defying 
the storms of the North while bear- 
ing mute testimony to the daring 
skill of their builders. It was from 
these brave men that Robert Louis 
Stevenson inherited his name and 

[31 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

his courage. He wrote in "Under- 
woods": 

"Say not of me that weakly I declined 
The labours of my sires and fled the sea, 
The towers we founded and the lamps we 

lit. 
To play at home with paper like a child. 
But rather say: In the afternoon of time 
A strenuous family dusted from its hands 
The sand of granite, and beholding far 
Along the sounding coast its pyramids 
And tall memorials catch the dying sun. 
Smiled well content, and to this childish 

task 
Around the fire addressed its evening 

hours." 

He "played with paper" to such 
good effect that now the name of 
Stevenson spells romance, courage 
against all odds, and the bright gos- 
pel of hope. 

He was born in Edinburgh on the 
13th of November, 1850, and chris- 

[4] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

tened Robert Lewis Balfour Steven- 
son. The spelling, but not the pro- 
nunciation, of his second name 
was changed later and the Balfour 
dropped. 

The climate of his native land was 
a cruel one for a delicate child — or 
perhaps the climate made the child 
delicate. At any rate, the story of his 
early life would be sad reading were 
it not for the radiance of his spirit 
that glowed through the dull clouds 
of ill-health like a burning lamp. 
When he was five years old he was 
asked by his mother what he had 
been doing, and the answer is the 
key-note of his character: "I have 
been playing all day," he said, "or 
at least I have been making myself 
cheerful." 

His eager eyes looked brightly 
[5] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

through the mist of pain and found 
charm and interest in everything 
about him. Through his rose-col- 
oured glasses the next-door garden 
was a foreign land; he heard gallop- 
ing hoofs in the wind at night, and 
his sick-bed, touched by the magic of 
his fancy, changed to "The Pleasant 
Land of Counter-pane." "Once," he 
wrote, *'as I lay playing hunter, hid 
in a thick laurel, and with a toy gun 
upon my arm, I worked myself so 
hotly into the spirit of the play that 
I think I can still see the herd of ante- 
lope come sweeping down the lawn 
and round the deodar — it was al- 
most a vision." 

In the evening, after dinner, one 
can imagine the "wee laddie" sitting 
by the fire, his head leaning on his 
hand, his eyes tightly shut, dreaming 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

of fairy lands, of forests, and the 
"rain-pool sea," and then 

"When my eyes I once again 
Open and see all things plain, 
High bare walls, great bare floor, 
Great big knobs on drawer and door. 
Great big people perched on chairs 
Stitching tucks and mending tears, 
Each a hill that I could climb 
And talking nonsense all the time. 

O dear me 

That I could be 
A sailor on the rain-pool sea, 
A climber in the clover tree, 
And just come back, a sleepy-head. 
Late at night to go to bed." 

Mr. Stevenson explained to me once, 
a little whimsically, that he wrote 
his books with the faith of a child 
playing a game. He believed his 
characters were real people, and 
saw them as clearly as the herd of 

[7] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

antelope galloping across his grand- 
father's lawn. If he once discovered 
they were only pen-and-ink, his story 
would come to an end. He said 
"an author must live in a book as 
a child in a game, oblivious to the 
world." He had no patience with 
half-hearted people. Once while wait- 
ing in a drawing-room he saw a 
small boy playing boat on a sofa. The 
little man rowed and put up sail and 
hauled in imaginary ropes, and final- 
ly, tiring of the game, jumped off the 
make-believe craft and walked to the 
door. "Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Steven- 
son reproachfully. "For God's sake 
swim ! " 

Though little Louis was an only 
child, he had cousins, and they all, 
himself included, adored "Auntie," 
his mother's sister. Miss Balfour, of 

[8] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

whom I quote this interesting de- 
scription: — "I have mentioned my 
aunt. In her youth she was a wit and 
a beauty, very imperious, managing, 
and self-sufficient. But as she grew 
up she began to suffice for all family 
as well. An accident on horse-back 
made her nearly deaf and blind, and 
suddenly transformed this wilful em- 
press into the most serviceable and 
amiable of women. There were thir- 
teen of the Balfours as (oddly enough) 
there were of the Stevensons, and the 
children of the family came home to 
her to be nursed, to be educated, to 
be mothered, from the infanticidal 
climate of India. There must some- 
times have been half-a-score of us 
children about the manse, and all 
were born a second time from Aunt 
Jane's tenderness. It was strange 
[9] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

when a new party of these sallow 
young folk came home, perhaps with 
an ayah. This little country manse 
was the centre of the world, and Aunt 
Jane represented Charity. The text, 
my mother says, must have been 
written for her and Aunt Jane: 
'More are the children of the bar- 
ren than the children of the married 
wite. 

A happy day at the manse was too 
often followed by illness, and then 
Alison Cunningham cared for the 
sick boy. To her he wrote: 

"For the long nights you lay awake 
And watched for my unworthy sake: 
For your most comfortable hand 
That led me through the uneven land: 
For all the story-books you read. 
For all the pains you comforted: 
For all you pitied, all you bore, 
In sad and happy days of yore: — 
[10] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

My second mother, my first wife, 
The angel of my infant life — 
From the sick child, now well and old, 
Take, nurse, the little book you hold ! 

And grant it, Heaven, that all who read 
May find as dear a nurse at need. 
And every child who lists my rhyme 
In the bright fireside nursery clime 
May hear it in as kind a voice 
As made my childish heart rejoice." 

In after years, whenever Stevenson 
spoke of his childhood, the sick-room, 
the wakeful nights, even the pain he 
suffered, served merely as a back- 
ground to " Cummy's" rare devotion. 
He was grateful to her all his Hfe. He 
wrote letters to her, he sent her copies 
of all his books as they came out, he 
had her to stay with him in Bourne- 
mouth, and even proposed sending 
for her to pay a visit to Samoa. 
*' Cummie was full of life and merri- 
[111 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

merit.* She sang and danced to her 
boy and read to him most dramat- 
ically. She herself tells how, the last 
time she ever saw him, he said to her 
before a room full of people: 'It's 
you that gave me a passion for the 
drama, Cummie.' ' Me, Master Lou,' 
I said. 'I never put foot inside a 
play-house in all my life!' *Ay, 
woman,' said he, 'but it was the 
grand dramatic way ye had of recit- 
ing the hymns!' " 

Louis Stevenson was one of the few 
people who recall their early days. 
In a way he never outgrew them. In- 
stead of passing through the phases 
of childhood and youth, he went on 
carrying them with him through life, 
growing richer with the years. In "A 

* Writes Graham Balfour in "Life of Robert 
Louis Stevenson." 

fl2l 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Child's Garden" one sees how vividly 
he remembered, for that book was 
not written for children; it was the 
recollections of his own childhood 
put into verse: 

"But do not think you can at all, 
By knocking on the window, call 
That child to hear you. He intent 
Is all on his play-business bent. 
He does not hear, he will not look, 
Nor yet be lured out of this book. 
For, long ago, the truth to say. 
He has grown up and gone away, 
And it is but a child of air 
That lingers in the garden there." 



13 



THE YOUTH 

^T^HOUGH Stevenson's parents 
were well to do and the lad was 
surrounded by every comfort and 
even luxury, the odds were against 
him. The climate of his native land 
was an impossible one, that made 
living in Edinburgh a constant fight 
for health; but his father would not 
forego his ambition to make his son 
a lighthouse engineer. The boy went 
obediently to Skerryvore, and the 
Bass Rock to inspect the construc- 
tion of the works, bringing home, not 
technical knowledge, but romantic 
impressions that he used afterward 
in his books, "David Balfour's" de- 

[14] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

scription of the old rock shows how 
clear some of them were. "The 
strange nature of this place, and the 
curiosities with which it abounded, 
held me busy and amused. ... I 
. . . continually explored the surface 
of the isle wherever it might support 
the foot of man. The old garden of 
the prison was still to be observed, 
with flowers and pot-herbs running 
wuld, and some ripe cherries on a 
bush. A little lower stood a chapel 
or a hermit's cell; who built or 
dwelt in it, none may know, and 
the thought of its age made a ground 
of many meditations. . . . There 
were times when I thought I could 
have heard the pious sound of 
psalms out of the martyr's dungeons, 
and seen the soldiers tramp the 
ramparts with their glinting pikes 

[15] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

and the dawn rising behind them 
out of the North Sea." 

Thomas Stevenson took his son on 
many wild trips about the North 
Coast of Scotland, trying to interest 
him in the profession that was so dear 
to his own heart. Stevenson respected 
the work and admired his father's 
share of it, as we read in "Thomas 
Stevenson, Civil Engineer." 

"At this time his lights were in 
every part of the world, guiding the 
mariner; his firm were the consulting 
engineers to the Indian, the New Zea- 
land, and the Japanese lighthouse 
boards, so that Edinburgh was a 
world centre for that branch of ap- 
plied science; in Germany he had 
been called *the Nestor of light- 
house illumination'; even in France, 
where his claims were long denied, 

[16] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

he was at last, on the occasion of the 
late exposition, recognised and med- 
alled." 

It must have needed a great deal of 
courage to tell such a man that his 
dearest hopes were to be dashed to 
the ground. Happily, the differences 
between father and son were of short 
duration, and they became in later 
years the best and closest of friends. 
The intense interest that Stevenson 
took in people, and life, and birds, 
and scenery, his constant scribbling 
in note-books, seemed to his father a 

waste of time. To the son, the study 
of lighthouse engineering became an 
impossibility, and he finally gave it 
up after an interview that must have 
been an exceedingly unhappy one for 
them both. 
Colvin describes this period of the 
[171 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

boy's life most vividly: "The ferment 
of youth was more acute and more 
prolonged in him than in most men of 
genius; and for several years he was 
torn hither and thither by fifty cur- 
rents of speculation, impulse and de- 
sire. ... I have tried to give some 
notion of the many various strains 
and elements which met in him and 
which were in these days pulling one 
against another in his half-formed 
being, at the great expense of spirit 
and body. Add the storms, which 
from time to time attacked him, of 
shivering repulsion from the climate 
and conditions of life in the city 
which he yet deeply and imagina- 
tively loved. . . . the seasons of 
temptation most strongly besetting 
the ardent and poetic temperament 
to seek escape into freedom and the 

[18] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

ideal through that grotesque back 
door opened by the crude alhirements 
of the city streets; the moods of spir- 
itual revolt against the harsh doc- 
trine of the creed in which his parents 
were deeply and his father even pas- 
sionately attached." 

The sensitive lad battled gallantly 
with fate. "Does it not seem surpris- 
ing," I quote from one of his youth- 
ful letters, "that I can keep the lamp 
alight through all this gusty weather 
in so frail a lantern ? And yet it burns 
cheerily." 

He took life, and his lessons, pain 
and play, changes from one school 
to another, lapses into illness and 
consequent travels on the continent, 
everything that came his way, in a 
spirit of intense appreciation and ab- 
sorbed interest. 

[19] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

None of the experiences of his 
youth were wasted or forgotten. 
From his hot-headed quarrels with 
his father he gathered the wisdom 
and insight to write "Crabbed Age 
and Youth," an essay that has helped 
many a parent to understand his son. 
His long tramps over the Scottish 
heather formed material for the most 
striking chapter in "Kidnapped." 
He paid a visit to an uncle in the 
parish of Stow on which he after- 
ward drew in "Hermiston" for 
knowledge of the Lammermuirs. The 
happy adventurous days of his youth 
that he spent exploring the Edin- 
burgh castle were minutely remem- 
bered and turned to good account in 
"St. Ives." He used the scenery of 
Brenner Pass, which he never saw 
after 1863, for the background of 

[20] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

*'Will o' the Mill." From his boyish 
resentment against the dogmas and 
narrow creed of his elders he evolved 
the broad, kindly tolerant, hopeful 
faith that inspired the "Prayers." 

Through the turbulent years of his 
youth Stevenson was sustained and 
upheld by a stout heart "radiating 
pure romance." He was like the lad- 
die with a lantern under his coat in 
the same he described so well. "We 
wore them buckled to the waist upon 
a cricket belt, and over them, such 
was the rigour of the game, a buttoned 
topcoat. They smelled noisomely of 
blistered tin; they never burned 
aright though they always burned 
our fingers; their use was naught; the 
pleasure of them merely fanciful ; and 
yet a boy w4th a bull's eye under his 
topcoat asked for nothing more!" 

[21] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

He was indeed a strange lad. The 
savour went out of life for him if he 
could "no longer see satyrs in the 
thicket, or picture a highwayman 
riding down the lane." In that same 
essay, "A Retrospect," he wrote: '' Et 
ego in Arcadia vixit would be no 
empty boast upon my grave. If I de- 
sire to live long it is that I may have 
the more to look back upon." 

"All through my boyhood," he ex- 
plained, "I was known and pointed 
out for a pattern of an idler, and yet 
I was always busy on my own private 
end, which was to learn to write. I 
kept always two books in my pocket, 
one to read, one to write in. As I 
walked my mind was busy fitting 
what I saw with appropriate words; 
when I sat by the roadside, I would 
either read, or a pencil and a penny 

[22] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

version book would be in my hand, to 
note down the features of the scene 
or commemorate some halting stan- 
zas. Thus I lived with words." 



[23] 



THE MAN 

T^T'ITH his heart set upon liter- 
ature as a profession, scrib- 
bling every spare moment and 
writing an astonishing number of 
essays (they fill a large volume of the 
"Edinburgh Edition"), it must have 
been uphill work for Stevenson to 
put his mind upon engineering at all. 
However, he was so successful as to 
receive a medal for an invention of 
" A New Form of Intermittent Light" 
and was commended by the Royal 
Scottish Society of Arts for his paper 
on that subject. 

When, in 1871, his father allowed 
him to abandon engineering, offering 
the law as a compromise, Louis fell 

[24] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

upon the new drudgery with such 
studious fury that he was called to 
the Scottish bar in July, 1875. On the 
25th he received his first complimen- 
tary brief and the next day he sailed 
for France. That his attitude of mind 
was well understood by his friends 
is shown by a letter from Fleeming 
Jenkin congratulating him, not upon 
entering a new profession, but on 
"getting rid of the law forever." 

By this time the young man's es- 
says were beginning to attract atten- 
tion, enough, at any rate, for his 
father to feel justified in giving him 
an allowance with full permission to 
follow the art he loved. From that 
moment to the day of his death Stev- 
enson devoted himself to literature 
with a passion and fervour that never 
failed. He had won out against all 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

odds and though success came to 
him slowly it came surely. He who 
had defended idleness so valiantly 
knew himself when he said, " I have a 
goad in the flesh continually pushing 
me to work, work, work." He was 
never without a pencil and a note- 
book, never so happy as when in the 
full tide of a new story or novel. He 
loved the "ring of words" and the 
game of sorting and arranging them 
to fit the exact meaning of his mind. 
He turned to letter-writing as a 
skilled cabinet-maker might fashion 
an elegant toy — for the fun of using 
his tools skilfully. In long hours of 
sickness and enforced rest from seri- 
ous work he scribbled verses to pass 
the time. He thought so little of these 
that "The Child's Garden of Verse" 
and "Underwoods" would not have 

[26] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

been printed had not many a poem 
been rescued from the margins of 
magazines, the fly-leaves of books 
he was reading, and even the waste- 
paper basket. 

He was very modest about his work 
and said of his first small success: "I 
begin to have more hope in the story 
line and that should improve my 
income." He laughed incredulously 
when a friend said to him, "I believe 
the day will come, Louis, when 
people will speak of 'Stevenson's 
Works.' " He lived long enough to 
hear the world ringing with his fame. 
When the "Edinburgh Edition" was 
in course of preparation he wrote to 
his old friend, Charles Baxter: "Do 
you remember — how many years ago 
I would be afraid to hazard a guess — 
one night when I communicated to 

[27] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

you certain intimations of early death 
and aspirations after fame? ... If 
any one at that moment could have 
shown me the 'Edinburgh Edition' 
I suppose I should have died. It is 
with gratitude and wonder that I con- 
sider 'the way in which I have been 
led.' Could a more presumptuous idea 
have occurred to us in those days 
when we used to search our pockets 
for coppers, too often in vain, and 
combine forces to produce the three- 
pence necessary for two glasses of 
beer, or wander down the Lothian 
Road without any, than that I should 
be strong and well at the age of forty- 
three in the island of Upolu, and that 
you should be at home bringing out 
the 'Edinburgh Edition'.?'' 

At Vailima, where he lived the last 
four years of his life, the monthly 

[281 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

mail brought up the mountain trail 
on a pack-saddle was overflowing 
with requests for his autograph, books 
from young authors begging for a 
word of approval from "the Master," 
and many letters from the brilliant 
and successful writers of the day, 
French, American, and English, prais- 
ing his latest work and hailing him 
generously as the greatest of them all. 
The profession of letters is one that 
is singularly free from jealousy, as 
was shown, when an author began to 
make himself known, by the enthusi- 
astic letters from fellow-writers call- 
ing Stevenson's attention to the new 
star on the horizon. 

Stevenson fought against all odds 
for the wife of his choice as he had 
done for his profession. From the first 
moment he met, at the little village of 

[291 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Grez in the forest of Fontainebleau, 
*' the woman for whom he was to dare 
so much, to receive in return* such 
entire devotion, and to leave in prose 
and verse, and in his uttered words 
to all his intimates, a tribute such as 
few women have been privileged to 
receive," until their marriage in San 
Francisco three years later, he sur- 
mounted one obstacle after another. 
The last book he wrote [that was left 
unfinished by his sudden death] was 
dedicated "To my Wife." 

"I saw the rain falling and the rain-bow 

drawn 
On Lammermuir. Hearkening, I heard 

again 
In my precipitous city beaten bells 
Winnow the keen sea-wind. And here 

afar, 
Intent on my own race and place I wrote. 

*W. H. Low, "A Chronicle of Friendships." 
[30] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Take thou the writing; thine it is. For 

who 
Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy 

coal, 
Held still the target higher; chary of praise 
And prodigal of counsel — who but thou ? 
So now in the end; if this the least be 

good. 
If any deed be done, if any fire 
Burn in the imperfect page, the praise be 

thine." 

This is to the critic, in acknowledg- 
ment of her influence and help in his 
literary work. 

To the wife he wrote: 

"Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, 
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew. 
Steel true and blade straight 
The great artificer made my mate. 

Honor, anger, valor, fire, 
A love that life could never tire. 
Death quench, or evil stir 
The mighty master gave to her. 
[31] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Teacher, tender comrade, wife, 
A fellow farer true through life. 
Heart whole and soul free. 
The August Father gave to me." 



[32] 



THE TRAVELLER 

"l^^HEN Stevenson found himself 
free to go where he would, 
he took the first road that offered — 
and it led him to France. 

"Then follow you wherever lie 
The travelling mountains of the sky 
Or let the streams, in civil mode 
Direct your choice upon the road. 

For one and all, or high or low 
Will lead you where you wish to go 
And one and all go night and day 
Over the hills and far away!" 

He and his friend, Sir Walter Simp- 
son, a young fellow of his own age, 
took a canoeing trip that he described 
afterward in "An Inland Voyage." 

[33] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

He enjoyed it all, good fortune and 
ill, wet and stormy days as well as 
fair, and only stopped to commiserate 
a poor fellow who had to stay behind. 
He was " the driver of the hotel om- 
nibus; a mean enough looking little 
man, as well as I can remember; but 
with a spark of something human in 
his soul. He had heard of our little 
journey, and came to me at once in 
envious sympathy. How he longed to 
travel! he told me. How he longed to 
be somewhere else, and see the round 
world before he went to his grave! 
*Here I am,' said he; *I drive to the 
station. Well. And then I drive back 
again to the hotel. And so on every 
day and all the week round. My God, 
is that life ! ' I could not say I thought 
it was — for him. He pressed me to 
tell him where I had been and where 

[34] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

I hoped to go; and as he Hstened I 
declare the fellow sighed. Might not 
this have been a brave African trav- 
eller, or gone to the Indies after 
Drake? But it is an evil age for the 
gipsily inclined among men. He who 
can sit squarest on a three-legged 
stool, he it is who has the w^ealth and 
glory." 

After many days of adventure they 
came to "La Fere of Cursed Mem- 
ory." Here they were taken for ped- 
lars and refused a night's lodging, to 
Stevenson's fury. "For my part," he 
stormed, "when I was turned out of 
the Stag or the Hind, or whatever it 
was, I would have set the temple of 
Diana on fire if it had been handy. 
There was no crime complete enough 
to express my disapproval of human 
institutions." After wading about in 

[35] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

the dark and rain for hours they found 
"La Croix de Malte," where they 
were received. " Little did the Bazins 
know how much they served us. We 
were charged for candles, for food and 
drink, and for the beds we slept in. 
But there was nothing in the bill for 
the husband's pleasant talk nor the 
pretty spectacle of their married life." 
It is only by a letter to a friend that 
one learns of the risks he took with 
his health, and even that is written in 
a cheerful vein. "I have had to fight 
against pretty mouldy health, so that, 
on the whole, the essayist and review- 
er has shown, I think, some pluck. 
Four days ago I was not a hundred 
miles from being miserably drowned, 
to the immense regret of a large circle 
of friends and the permanent impov- 
erishment of British Essayism and 

[361 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Reviewery. My boat culbutted me 
under a fallen tree in a very rapid cur- 
rent; and I was a good while before I 
got on to the outside of that fallen 

o 

tree, rather a better while than I cared 
about." 

His next journey was afoot, his com- 
panion a donkey, " a love, price sixty- 
five francs and a glass of brandy." 
"His love" refused to move beyond 
a snail's pace until a passing peasant 
taught him the art of donkey driv- 
ing and gave him the magic word 
"proot." "The rogue pricked up her 
ears and broke into a good round 
pace, which she kept up without flag- 
ging and without exhibiting the least 
symptoms of distress as long as the 
peasant kept beside us." When his 
preceptor left and they "started to 
climb an interminable hill upon the 

[37] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

other side, ' proot ' seemed to have lost 
its virtue. I prooted Hke a Hon. I 
prooted mellifluously hke a sucking 
dove ; but Modestine would be neither 
softened nor intimidated. She held 
doggedly to her pace." Finally an inn- 
keeper made Stevenson a goad and 
all went well. The innkeeper's wife 
understood the object of his journey 
perfectly, "She sketched at what I 
should put into my book when I got 
home. * Whether people harvest or 
not in such and such a place; if there 
were forests; studies of names; what, 
for example, I and the Master of the 
house say to you; and the beauty of 
nature and all that.' " Such is the 
story of "Travels with a Donkey" 
done into perfect prose. 

A far different journey was his next 
one, when he travelled as "An Ama- 

[38] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

teur Emigrant to California Across 
the Plains." He knew France well, 
spoke the language fluently, and un- 
derstood the customs of the people. 
The United States was a foreign land. 

"With half a heart I wander here 
As from an age gone by, 
A brother — yet though young in years 
An elder brother, I. 

You speak another tongue than mine 
Though both were English born — 
I towards the night of time decline 
You mount into the morn. 

Youth shall grow great and strong and free 
But age must still decay — 
Tomorrow for the States — for me 
England and yesterday!" 

It was not until after ten years of in- 
creasing illness, after he had vainly 
sought health in Hyeres, Davos- 
Platz, Bournemouth, and the Adi- 

[39] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

rondacks, that Fate, suddenly relent- 
ing, sent him to the South Seas. 

"By strange pathways God hath brought 
you Tusitala. 
In strange webs of fortune caught you. 
Led you by strange moods and measures 
To this paradise of pleasures."* 

It was indeed a paradise to Steven- 
son, a new world full of sunlight and 
warmth, romance, and strange ad- 
venture. "The first experience can 
never be repeated. The first love, the 
first sunrise, the first South Sea Is- 
land, are memories apart." When his 
yacht, the Casco, plunged its an- 
chor into the waters of Nuka-hiva 
Bay, "it was a small sound, a great 
event," Stevenson wrote, "but my 
soul went down with these moorino-s 

o 

* Edmund Gosse in the dedication, "In Russet 
and Silver." 

[40] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

whence no windlass may extract or 
diver fish it up, and I, and some part 
of my ship's company were from that 
hour the bond slaves of the isles of 
Vivien." 

After more than a year of voyaging 
among the islands he moored his bark 
on the shore of the most beautiful of 
them all, Upolu of the Samoan group. 
*'For here," he declared, "if more 
days are granted me they shall be 
passed where I have found life most 
pleasant and man most interesting!" 



[41] 



THE WRITER 

npHE first of Stevenson's books 
to make a success was " Treas- 
ure Island." The idea of the story 
was suggested by a map which he 
drew for Lloyd Osbourne, his step- 
son, "a schoolboy home from the 
holidays and much in need of some- 
thing craggy to break his mind upon." 
"He had no thought of literature; it 
was the art of Raphael that received 
his fleeting suffrages; ... I would 
sometimes unbend a little, join the 
artist (so to speak) at the easel, and 
pass the afternoon with him in a 
generous emulation, making coloured 
drawings. On one of these occasions, 

[42] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

I made the map of an island; it was 
elaborately and (I thought) beauti- 
fully coloured; the shape of it took 
my fancy beyond expression; it con- 
tained harbours that pleased me like 
sonnets; and, with the unconscious- 
ness of the predestined, I ticketed my 
performance 'Treasure Island.'" He 
was soon at work writing out a list of 
chapters. "It was to be a story for 
boys; no need for psychology or fine 
writing; and I had a boy at hand to 
be a touchstone. ... I had counted 
on one boy, I found I had two in my 
audience. My father caught fire at 
once with all the romance and child- 
ishness of his original nature. . . . 
When the time came for Billy Bones's 
chest to be ransacked, he must have 
passed the better part of a day pre- 
paring, on the bayk of a legal envel- 

[43] 



ROBERT I.OUIS STEVENSON 

ope, an inventory of its contents, 
which I exactly followed; and the 
name of 'Flint's old ship' — the Wal- 
rus — was given at his particular re- 
quest." 
"Treasure Island" was dedicated to 

Lloyd Osbourne, 

An American Gentleman, 

In accordance with whose classic taste 

The following narrative has been designed. 

It is now in return for numerous delightful 

hours 
And with the kindest wishes dedicated 
By his affectionate friend, 
The Author. 

Prince Otto surrounded by his 
charming court, in the midst of ro- 
mance, mystery, and intrigue, was 
the first modern novel laid in an 
imaginary kingdom; it has been so 
widely imitated, that one loses the 
effect of originality which so startled 

[44] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

its first readers. Stevenson said of 
this book, in a rather mocking hu- 
mour: "It is queer and a Httle, little 
bit free; and some of the parties are 
immoral, and the whole thing is not 
a romance, nor yet a comedy; nor 
yet a romantic comedy ; but a kind of 
preparation of some of the element 
of all three in a glass jar." But, all 
the same, in another letter he wrote: 
"A brave story, I swear, and a brave 
play, too, if we can find the trick to 
make the end." And his heart warms 
to his hero, *'my poor, clever, feather- 
headed Prince whom I love already." 
He worked hard over the book, de- 
scribing it as "a strange example of 
the diflSculty of being ideal in an age 
of realism." 

There is a beautiful passage in 
"Prince Otto" that is often quoted. 

[45] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The Princess had been wandering in 
the woods all night. "At last she 
began to be aware of a wonderful 
revolution, compared to which the 
fire of Mitt Walden Palace was but 
the crack and flash of a percussion- 
cap. The countenance with which the 
pines regarded her began insensibly 
to change; the grass, too, short as it 
was, and the whole winding staircase 
of the brook's course, began to wear 
a solemn freshness of appearance. 
And this slow transfiguration reached 
her heart, and played upon it, and 
transpierced it with a serious thrill. 
She looked all about; the whole face 
of nature looked back, brimful of 
meaning, finger on lip, leaking its 
glad secret. She looked up. Heaven 
was almost emptied of stars. Such as 
still lingered shone with a changed 

[46] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

and waning brightness, and began 
to faint in their stations. 

"And the colour of the sky itself was 
the most wonderful ; for the rich blue 
of the night had now melted and 
softened and brightened; and there 
had succeeded in its place a hue that 
has no name, and that is never seen 
but as the herald of the morning. ' O,' 
she cried, joy catching at her voice; 
'O it is the dawn!' " 

Stevenson was in Saranac when the 
idea came to him for the story of 
"The Master of Ballantrae." "It was 
winter, the night was very dark; the 
air extraordinarily clear and cold, 
and sweet with the purity of forests." 
He had been reading the "Phantom 
Ship." "'Come,' said I to my engine; 
'let us make a tale, a story of many 
years and countries, of the sea and the 

[47] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

land, savagery and civilisation.' " He 
tells us that "On such a fine frosty 
night, with no wind and the thermom- 
eter below zero, the brain works with 
much vivacity; and the next moment 
I had seen the circumstance trans- 
planted from India and the tropics 
to the Adirondack wilderness and the 
stringent cold of the Canadian bor- 
der." 

In the dedication to Sir Percy and 
Lady Shelley he tells the strange story 
of its writing: "Here is a tale which 
extends over many years and travels 
into many countries. By a peculiar 
fitness of circumstance the writer be- 
gan, continued it, and concluded it 
among distant and divers scenes. 
Above all, he was much upon the sea. 
The character and fortune of the fra- 
ternal enemies, the hall and shrub- 

[48] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

bery of Durrisdeer, the problem of 
MacKellars homespun and how to 
shape it for superior flights; these 
were his company on deck in many 
star reflecting harbours, ran often 
in his mind at sea to the tune of 
slatting canvas, and were dismissed 
(something of the suddenest) on the 
approach of squalls. It is my hope 
that these surroundings of its manu- 
facture may to some degree find 
favour for my story with sea-farers 
and sea-lovers like yourselves. 

"And at least here is a dedication 
from a great way off; written by the 
loud shores of a subtropical island 
near upon ten thousand miles from 
Boscombe Chine and Manor; scenes 
which rise before me as I write along 
with the faces and voices of my 
friends." 

[49] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The list of his complete writings 
would be a long one, including as 
they do, the wide range of essays, 
fables, critical reviews, plays, trav- 
els, romances, memoirs, verses, and 
novels. 

The book that made the greatest 
sensation, that sold forty thousand 
copies in England and over a quar- 
ter of a million in America, is "The 
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde." It is an allegory written in 
the form of a story that has been 
played in theatres and preached in 
churches. A slim book in size but 
great in power, that leaves the reader 
thrilled with horror, not only at the 
monster Hyde but at the possibilities 
of evil in one's own heart. 



[50] 



THE TEACHER 

OTEVENSON was one of the first 
to teach the optimistic doctrine 
of Hfe. "The disease of pessimism," 
he declared, "springs never from 
real troubles, which it braces a man 
to bear, which it delights men to bear 
well. Nor does it readily spring at 
all in minds that have conceived of 
life as a field of ordered duties not 
as a chase in which to hunt for grati- 
fications." 

He upheld "gentleness and cheer- 
fulness, these come before all moral- 
ity ; they are the perfect duties. If your 
morals make you dreary depend upon 
it they are wrong. I do not say *give 
them up,' for they may be all you 

[51] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

have; but conceal them Hke a vice, 
lest they should spoil the lives of bet- 
ter and simpler people." 

"Noble disappointment, noble self- 
denial are not to be admired, not soon 
to be pardoned if they bring bitter- 
ness." "Nature is a good guide 
through life, and the love of simple 
pleasures next, if not superior to, 
virtue." 

"There is no duty we so much un- 
derrate as the duty of being happy. 
By being happy we sow anonymous 
benefits upon the world, which re- 
main unknown even to ourselves, or 
when they are disclosed, surprise no 
body so much as the benefactor." 
"A happy man or woman is a better 
thing to find than a five-pound note. 
He or she is a radiating focus of good- 
will; and their entrance into a room 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

is as though another candle had been 
Hghted." These are inspiring words, 
and they go far and sink deep coming 
from a man Hke Stevenson whose pul- 
pit was a sick-bed; who had linked 
arms with Pain and smiled in the face 
of Death. He encouraged you " by all 
means to finish your folio ; even if the 
doctor does not give you a year ; even 
if he hesitates about a month, make 
a brave push and see what can be ac- 
complished in a week. It is not only 
in finished undertakings that we 
ought to honour useful labour. A 
spirit goes out of the man who means 
execution which outlives the most 
untimely ending. All who have meant 
good work with their whole hearts 
have done good work although they 
may die before they have time to sign 
it. Every heart that has beat strong 

[53] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

and cheerfully has left a hopeful 
impulse behind it in the world and 
bettered the traditions of mankind." 
*' To be honest, to be kind, to earn a 
little and spend a little less, to make 
upon the whole a family happier for 
his presence, to renounce, when that 
shall be necessary and not to be em- 
bittered, to keep a few friends, but 
these without capitulation — above 
all, on the same grim conditions, to 
keep friends with himself — here is 
a task for all that a man has of forti- 
tude and delicacy." ^' Eire et jjas avoir 
to be not to possess — that is the 
problem of life. To be wealthy a rich 
nature is the first requisite, and 
money but the second. To be of a 
quick and healthy blood, to share in 
all honourable curiosities, to be rich 
in admiration and free from envy, to 

[54] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

rejoice greatly in the good of others, 
to hve with such generosity of heart 
that your love is still a dear possession 
in absence or unkindness — these are 
the gifts of fortune which money can- 
not buy and without which money 
can buy nothing." 

He tells us that "a man is not to 
expect happiness, only to profit by it 
gladly when it shall arise; he is on 
duty here ; he knows not how or why, 
and does not need to know; he knows 
not for what hire, and must not ask. 
Somehow or other, though he does 
not know what goodness is, he must 
try to be good; somehow or other, 
though we cannot tell what will do 
it, he must try to give happiness to 
others." 

*' Mankind is not only the whole in 
general, but every one in particular. 

[55] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Every man or woman is one of man- 
kind's dear possessions; to his or her 
just brain, and kind heart, and ac- 
tive hands, mankind intrusts some of 
its hopes for the future; he or she is 
a possible well-spring of good acts 
and source of blessings to the race." 
He does not preach only to the wise 
or the clever or the great ; he declares 
that "the man who has his heart on 
his sleeve, and a good whirling weath- 
ercock of a brain, who reckons his 
life as a thing to be dashingly used 
and cheerfully hazarded, makes a 
very different acquaintance of the 
world, keeps all his pulses going true 
and fast, and gathers impetus as he 
runs, until, if he be running towards 
anything better than wildfire, he may 
shoot up and become a constellation 
in the end." And then " when the 

[56] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

time comes that he should go there 
need be few illusions left about him- 
self. Here lies one who meant well, 
tried a little, failed much; — surely 
that may be his epitaph, of which he 
need not be ashamed, nor will he 
complain at the summons which calls 
a defeated soldier from the field; de- 
feated, ay, if he were Paul or Marcus 
Aurelius! — but, if there is still one 
inch of fight in his old spirit, undis- 
honoured. The faith which sustained 
him in his lifelong blindness and 
lifelong disappointment will scarce 
even be required in this last formality 
of laying down his arms. Give him a 
march with his old bones; there, out 
of the glorious sun coloured earth, 
out of the day and dust and the ec- 
stacy — there goes another Faithful 
Failure!" 

[57] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

'If I have faltered more or less 
In my great task of happiness; 
If I have moved among my race 
And shown no glorious morning face; 
If beams from happy human eyes 
Have moved me not; if morning skies. 
Books and my food, and summer rain 
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain; — 
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take 
And stab my spirit broad awake; 
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
Choose Thou, before that spirit die, 
A piercing pain, a killing sin. 
And to my dead heart run them in!'* 



[58] 



THE FRIEND 

OTEVENSON had the gift of 
making friends, for *' there was 
that about him," says Graham Bal- 
four, "that he was the only man I 
have ever known who possessed 
charm in high degree, whose char- 
acter did not suffer from the pos- 
session. The gift comes naturally to 
women, and they are at their best in 
its exercise. But a man requires to be 
of a very sound fibre before he can 
be entirely himself and keep his heart 
single, if he carries about with him a 
talisman to obtain from all men and 
all women the object of his heart's 
desire. Both gifts Stevenson pos- 
sessed, not only the magic but also 

[591 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

the strength of character to which it 
was safely intrusted." 

That he was utterly unconscious of 
possessing any such attribute is shown 
by a fragment written in his youth, 
describing the three wishes of his 
heart: "First, good health; secondly, 
a small competence; thirdly, du 
Lieber Gott friends!" They came in 
answer to that call by the thousands, 
many of them his readers who had 
never known the man Stevenson. 
Even his intimate and personal 
friends were many, from all walks in 
life, rich and poor, philosopher and 
fisherman, white and brown. It is not 
surprising that he should have had 
such friends as Sidney Colvin, pro- 
fessor of arts; Edmund Gosse, poet; 
Will H. Low, painter, and nearly all 
the prominent writers of his day, but 

[60] 




IN THE LinRARY AT VAILIMA, DICTATING TO MRS. STRONG 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

every one who ever came in contact 
with him, man or woman, that per- 
son was his friend for Hfe, even 
imitating his mannerisms and tricks 
of speech — his landladies, bell-boys, 
hotel porters, innkeepers. 

It was at Monterey that he first 
met Simoneau. In '*the old Pacific 
capital," he said, "of all my private 
collection of remembered inns and 
restaurants — and I believe it, others 
things being equal, to be unrivalled — 
one particular house of entertainment 
stands forth alone. I am grateful, in- 
deed, to many a swinging sideboard, 
to many a dusty wine-bush; but not 
with the same kind of gratitude. Some 
were beautifully situated, some had an 
admirable table, some were the gath- 
ering places of excellent companions ; 
but take them for all in all, not one 

[611 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

can be compared with Simoneau's at 
Monterey." 

Stevenson was taken ill there and 
the Frenchman visited and befriended 
him, "a most pleasant old boy with 
whom I discuss the universe and play 
chess daily." In after years, as each 
of his books came out, a copy with 
an inscription was sent to Simoneau 
till the old man had a complete set 
of first editions, besides many letters 
and photographs. His restaurant had 
failed, and he supported himself by 
selling "tamales" on the street, and 
though he was offered a very hand- 
some sum of money for his Steven- 
son books and letters he refused to 
part with them. Mrs. Stevenson, in 
grateful recognition of the old man's 
loyalty, was able to make his declin- 
ing years comfortable, hastened to his 

[62] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

bedside when he died, and erected a 
handsome tombstone to his memory. 

Every doctor who ever attended 
Stevenson became his friend; to his 
admiration of the medical practi- 
tioner and his personal gratitude 
we owe the beautiful dedication to 
"Underwoods" that begins: 

" There are men and classes of men 
that stand above the common herd; 
the soldier, the sailor, and the shep- 
herd not unf requently ; the artist 
rarely; rarelier still, the clergyman; 
the physician almost as a rule. He is 
the flower (such as it is) of our civil- 
isation. . . . Generosity he has, such 
as is possible to those who practice 
an art, never to those who drive a 
trade; discretion, tested by a hundred 
secrets; tact, tried in a thousand em- 
barrassments; and, what are more im- 

[03] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

portant, Herculean cheerfulness and 
courage. So it is that he brings air and 
cheer into the sick-room, and often 
enough, though not so often as he 
wishes, brings healing." 

Tembinok, the last King of the Gil- 
bert Islands, was a friend for whom 
Stevenson had a profound admira- 
tion. He describes their leave-taking 
in his South Sea book: "As the time 
came for our departure Tembinok 
became greatly changed; a softer, 
more melancholy, and, in particular, 
a more confidential man appeared in 
his stead. To my wife he contrived 
laboriously to explain that though he 
knew he must lose his father in the 
course of nature, he had not minded 
nor realised it till the moment came; 
and now that he was to lose us, he re- 
peated the experience. ... 'I very 

[G4] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

sorry you go,' he said at last. 'Miss 
Stlevens he good man, woman he 
good man, boy he good man; all good 
man. Woman he smart all same man. 
My woman,' glancing toward his 
wives, ' he good woman no very smart. 
I think Miss Stlevens he big chiep all 
the same cap'n man-o'-war. I think 
Miss Stlevens he rich man all same 
me. All go schoona. I very sorry. My 
patha he go, my uncle he go, my 
cutcheons he go. Miss Stlevens he go: 
all go. You no see King cry before. 
King all the same man; feel bad, he 
cry. I very sorry.' " 

On one of the South Sea voyages 
Stevenson and his party were de- 
tained at a native village two months. 
The Chief, Ori a' Ori, sent a farewell 
letter when they left that " as for me," 
Stevenson said, "I would rather have 

[65 1 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

received it than written ' Redgauntlet ' 
or the 'Sixth .Eneid.' " This is the 
translation : 

"I make you to know my great 
affection. At the hour when you left 
us, I w^as filled with tears; my wife, 
Rui Telime, also, and all of my house- 
hold. When you embarked I felt a 
great sorrow. It is for this that I went 
upon the road, and you looked from 
that ship, and I looked at you on the 
ship with great grief until you had 
raised the anchor and hoisted the sails. 
When the ship started I ran along the 
beach to see you still; and when you 
were on the open sea I cried out to 
you, 'Farewell, Louis,' and when I 
was coming back to my house I 
seemed to hear your voice crying, 
*Rui, farewell.' Afterward I watched 

[66] 



ROBERT I.OUIS STEVENSON 

the ship as long as I could until the 
night fell, and when it was dark I 
said to myself, 'If I had wings I 
should fly to the ship.' I will not for- 
get you in my memory. Here is the 
thought. I desire to meet you again. 
It is my dear Teriitera (Stevenson) 
makes the only riches I desire in this 
world. It is your eyes I desire to see 
again. It must be that your body and 
my body shall eat together at one 
table; there is what would make my 
heart content. But now we are sepa- 
rated. May God be with you all. May 
His word and His mercy go with you, 
so that you may be well and we also, 
according to the words of Paul. 

"Ori a' Ori." 

I have not the space to tell the story 
of the Princess Moe of Tahiti, of 

[671 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Tati Salmon with whom Stevenson 
made brothers in the island fashion, 
of the beautiful Princess Kaiulani 
that he knew "in the April of her 
age and at Waikiki within easy walk 
of Kaiulani's banyan," of the French 
fisherman of Monterey whom he met 
at Marseilles after many years and 
entertained at his hotel, of Mother 
Mary Anne of saintly memory, of 
the blind white leper at Molokai, 
of the Captains and Supercargoes of 
the many ships on which he sailed, 
of mad, handsome, romantic "Tin 
Jack," original of "Tommy Had- 
don " in " The Wrecker" ; of the Mis- 
sionaries, Protestant, Catholic, Mor- 
mon, and Wesley an, for these are a 
few only of the many friends of him 
who said, "If we find but one to 
whom we can speak out of our heart 

[68] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

freely, with whom we can walk in 
love and simplicity without dissimula- 
tion, we have no ground of quarrel 
with the world or God." 



[69] 



THE POET 

OTEVENSON was not only able 
to express his thoughts in beau- 
tiful language, he was born with a 
poet's soul, and nature spoke to him 
as to an intimate. Of a pleasant 
French landscape he wrote: "From 
time to time a warm wind rustled 
down the valley and set all the chest- 
nuts dangling their branches of foli- 
age and fruit; the ear was filled with 
rustling music and the shadows 
danced in tune." 

A passing phase of beatitude 
brought forth this charming expla- 
nation: "some thoughts, which sure 
would be the most beautiful, vanish 
before we can rightly scan their 

[70] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

faces; as though a God travelling 
by our green highways should but 
ope the door, give one smiling look 
into the house, and go again forever. 
Was it Apollo, Mercury, or Love 
with folded wings? Who shall say? 
But we go the lighter about our busi- 
ness and feel peace and pleasure in 
our heart." 
He found exquisite beauty in 

"Every fairy wheel and thread 
Of cobweb dew — bediamonded," 

and frosts that 

"enchant the pool 
And make the cart-ruts beautiful." 

To him the world was full of ro- 
mance. It was his birthright 

"to hear 
The great bell beating far and near — 
[711 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The odd unknown, enchanted gong 
That on the road hales men along. 
That from the mountain calls afar. 
That lures the vessel from a star 
And with a still aerial sound 
Makes all the earth enchanted ground." 

The little verses from "A Child's 
Garden " brighten many of the school 
books in England and America with 
their pleasant lessons of happiness in 
simple things: 

"How do you like to go up in a swing 
Up in the air so blue ? 
Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing 
Ever a child can do!" 

and such gentle admonitions as — 

"A child should always say what's true 
And speak when he is spoken to, 
And behave mannerly at table; 
At least as far as he is able." 

For the comfort of sick children 

[72] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

there was never anything more brave 
and beautiful than 

"The Land of Counterpane." 

And all of us, old and young, are bet- 
ter for the motto that hangs in many 
a nursery, sewing-room, office, and 
workshop : 

"The World is so full of a number of things 
I am sure we should all be as happy as 
kings." 

The "Ballads," that include many 
of the legends of Tahiti done into 
verse, was dedicated to the Chief Ori 
a' Ori: 

"Ori my brother in the island mode, 
In every tongue and meaning much my 

friend, 
This story of your country and your clan, 
In your loved house, your too much hon- 
oured guest, 

[73] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

I made in English. Take it, being done; 
And let me sign it with the name you gave, 
Teritera." 

In "Underwoods" many of his best 
and most serious poems are found 
both in Scotch and English; but in 
" Songs of Travel" Stevenson touches 
a gayer, Hghter note that breathes 
of returning health and the salt sea 
breezes. 

"I will make you brooches and toys for 

your delight 
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine 

at night. 
I will make a palace, fit for you and me. 
Of green days in forests and blue days at 

sea. 
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep 

your room 
Where white flows the river and bright 

blows the broom. 
And you shall wash your linen and keep 

your body white 
[74] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

In rainfall at morning and dew-fall at 
night. 

And this shall be for music when no one 
else is near 

The fine song for singing, the rare song to 
hear : 

That only I remember, that only you ad- 
mire 

Of the broad road that stretches and the 
road-side fire." 

Many of the verses in " The Child's 
Garden" and "Songs of Travel" 
have been set to music: 

"Bright is the ring of words 

When the right man rings them. 
Fair the fall of songs 

When the singer sings them. 

Still they are carolled and said — 
On wings they are carried — 

After the singer is dead 
And the maker buried. 

Low as the singer lies 
In the field of heather, 
[75] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Songs of his fashion bring 
The swains together. 

And when the west is red 
With the sunset embers, 

The lover Hngers and sings 
And the maid remembers." 



[76] 



THE CHIEF 

AFTER more than ten years of 
the sick-room, his "horizon four 
walls," it is not strange that Steven- 
son should have loved Samoa, where 
he found comparative health and was 
able to live out-of-doors. His let- 
ters to his friends were enthusiastic. 
"I wouldn't change my present in- 
stallation for any post, dignity, 
honour, or advantage conceivable 
to me. It fills the bill. I have the 
loveliest time." "This is a hard and 
interesting and beautiful life we lead 
now." "Our fine days are certainly 
fine like Heaven; such a blue of the 
sea, such green of the trees, and such 
crimson of the hibiscus flowers you 

[77] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

never saw; and the air as mild and 
gentle as a baby's breath — and yet 
not hot." "The sea, the islands, the 
islanders, the island life and climate 
make and keep me truly happier." 

To his old friend Colvin he wrote: 
"After breakfast 1 rode home. Con- 
ceive such an outing, remember the 
pallid brute that lived in Skerryvore 
like a weevil in a biscuit, and receive 
the intelligence that I was rather the 
better for my journey. Twenty miles 
ride, sixteen fences taken, ten of the 
miles in a drenching rain, seven of 
them fasting and in the morning chill, 
and six stricken hours' political dis- 
cussion by an interpreter; to say 
nothing of sleeping in a native house 
at which many of our litterati would 
have looked askance in itself." 

In a speech to an assemblage of 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Samoan chiefs Stevenson said: "I 
love Samoa and her people. I love the 
land. I have chosen it to be my home 
while I live and my grave after I am 
dead, and I love the people and have 
chosen them to be my people to live 
and die with." 

He bought a tract of land, built a 
large house which he furnished from 
his old home in Bournemouth and 
his father's place in Edinburgh, gath- 
ered his family about him, and lived 
like a country gentleman with many 
horses, a dairy, vegetable gardens, 
acres of pineapples, bananas and 
cacao, the grounds laid out with ten- 
nis courts and beautified by tropical 
trees and flowers. One of his prayers 
breathes the atmosphere of Vailima. 
'*We thank Thee for this place in 
which we dwell; for the love that 

[79] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

unites us; for the peace accorded us 
this day ; for the hope with which we 
expect the morrow; for the health, the 
work, the food, and bright skies that 
make our Hves dehghtful; for our 
friends in all parts of the earth and 
our friendly helpers in this foreign 
isle. Give us courage and gaiety and 
the quiet mind. Spare to us our 
friends, soften to us our enemies. 
Bless us, if it may be, in all our inno- 
cent endeavours. If it may not, give 
us the strength to encounter that 
which is to come, that we be brave 
in peril, constant in tribulation, tem- 
perate in wrath, and in all changes of 
fortune, and down to the gates of 
death, loyal and loving, one to an- 
other." 

He described the house in one of 
his letters as "three miles from town, 

[80] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

in the midst of great silent forests. 
There is a burn close by, and when 
we are not talking you can hear the 
burn, and the birds, and the sea 
breaking on the coast three miles 
away and six hundred feet below us." 
Stevenson worked in the mornings, 
usually by dictation, which made his 
correspondence and novels much less 
trying to his strength. He was deeply 
interested in the government of the 
country and outlined a policy that 
has since been adopted with success 
by the Germans in their occupation 
of Upolu and Savaii. He rode a good 
deal on his brown horse, Jack, and 
was one of the "hounds" in a cross- 
country paper chase; he paid visits 
to the other islands, studied the 
Samoan language, read until late 
nearly every night, and often at- 

[81] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

tended the entertainments given by 
the men-of-war or townspeople at 
the Apia Pubhc Hall, where he joined 
in the dance which he described as 
*'a most fearful and wonderful qua- 
drille; I don't know where the devil 
they fished it from, but it is rackety 
and prancing and embraciatory be- 
yond words ; perhaps it is best defined 
in Haggard's expression as a gam- 
bado." 

Stevenson had been shut in from 
the world for so many weary years 
that he loved to keep open house; 
Vailima was the scene of numerous 
entertainments, balls, dinners, tennis 
parties on the lawn, and no holiday, 
English, American, or Samoan, was 
allowed to pass without an appro- 
priate celebration. 

At Christmas time the house would 

[821 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

be filled with guests for several days, 
dancing, playing charades and games, 
and there was always an old-fash- 
ioned Christmas tree loaded with 
gifts. The first cotillon ever seen in 
Samoa was held at Vailima in honour 
of Washington's birthday. There was 
a dinner to all the English officers and 
officials in town on the occasion of 
Queen Victoria's jubilee. The thir- 
teenth of November, the anniversary 
of Stevenson's birth, was celebrated 
by a grand feast given in the native 
fashion, the chiefs and their families 
arriving early in the day with pres- 
ents of turtles, kava root, fans, model 
canoes, rings, live pigs carried on 
poles, and rolls of tapa and fine 
mats. 

The midshipmen and officers of the 
men-of-war in port, the various offi- 

[83] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

cials of England, Germany and the 
United States, the missionaries and 
their wives, the Samoan chiefs with 
their famihes and retainers, passing 
tourists, even the sailors on their 
liberty day ashore, all found a wel- 
come at Vailima. 

He who said "it is better to lose 
life like a spendthrift than to waste 
it like a miser. It is better to live 
and be done with it than die daily 
in the sick-room" was spared the 
horror of a linoerino; illness. 

In the best health he had ever en- 
joyed; in the midst of his work on 
"Weir of Hermiston," that he be- 
lieved to be his masterpiece, with 
those he loved most around him, his 
plans laid for weeks ahead, in the 
fulness of his powers, in the forty- 
fourth year of his age, the end came 

r84i 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

suddenly and painlessly by a stroke 
of apoplexy. 

He died at ten minutes past eight on 
Monday evening the third of Decem- 
ber, 1894. 

He lay as though asleep, on a nar- 
row couch in the middle of the great 
hall. The Union Jack that flew above 
Vailima was lowered and draped over 
the body. All through the night, 
as the sad news spread about the 
island, parties of Samoans came to 
pay their last respects to the truest 
friend they had ever known. 

He had chosen Mount Vaia to be 
his last resting-place ; the pathway up 
the steep hillside through the jungle 
was cut in the night by forty loyal 
Samoans, and on the morning of the 
fourth he was laid to rest. 

"Nothing more picturesque can be 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

imagined* than the narrow ledge that 
forms the summit of Mount Vaia, a 
place no wider than a room and flat as 
a table. On either side the land de- 
scends precipitately; in front lie the 
vast ocean and the surf -swept reefs; 
to the right and left green mountains 
rise, densely covered with the prime- 
val forest." On this spot the tomb 
was built that took several months in 
the making; it is of solid blocks of 
cement welded together in a noble 
design with two large bronze tablets 
let in on either side. One bears the 
inscription in Samoan, *'The resting 
place of Tusitala," followed by the 
quotation (in the same language), 
**Thy country shall be my country 
and thy God my God." On the other 



* Lloyd Osbourne in "A Letter to Mr. Stevenson's 
Friends." 

[8G] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

side are the name and dates and the 
requiem: 

"Under the wide and starry sky 
Dig the grave and let me lie. 
Glad did I live and gladly die, 
And I laid me down with a will. 
This be the verse you grave for me: 
'Here he lies where he longed to be. 
Home is the sailor home from the sea 
And the hunter home from the hill.' *'* 



[87] 



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